


Only If For A Night

by kay_emm_gee



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, F/M, Ghosts, Vampires
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-31
Updated: 2015-10-31
Packaged: 2018-04-29 04:29:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5115764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kay_emm_gee/pseuds/kay_emm_gee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With bloody feet, she walks the hallowed ground.</p><p>He may not build coffins, but with his bloodlust, he could certainly fill them.</p><p>They both belong to death, but sometimes even death isn't the strongest power in the world.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Only If For A Night

**_i. bloody feet, hallowed ground_ **

She cannot get the blood off of her feet, and that is the most frustrating part. It should be the lack of corporality, or the restriction of her presence to the graveyard, but no, it is the blood. Not even her blood, though that does stain the front of her white dress plenty, blooming outward from her middle like the petals of a macabre rose. The mess on her feet isn’t hers, but it is her fault. So many dead at her hands; it should be written into her fingerprints at this point. Instead, the guilt is on the pads of her feet, marking her steps in the dark (only in the dark) as she walks among the headstones, a ghostly reminder of just exactly what she leaves in her wake.

There is no until-death-do-us-part clause for her and her guilt.

Clarke gladly takes that burden though, heavy as it and its price is. She carries it with each rise and fall of the moon, centuries after her death, when the rest of her coven lies deep beneath the earth, their skeletons home for beetles now. It is easy to picture the glittering black against the bleached bone, because she herself is wavering white against inky night. Centuries lay behind her, and more stretch before her, yet her entire world is reduced to two stark shades.

Except for the red, the blood, a splash of life in the midst of purgatory. Even so, she still hates the way it drips from her hem onto her stained toes, a loop as endless as her trips around the decrepit graves. Immortality seemed like a gift when she was a witch, when she belonged to the living. Now, she bears it because she has to.

So when he shows up, a dark silhouette in the midnight fog that doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the graveyard shadows she knows so well by now, it shocks her. Change shocks her now, when she used to be the very source of change, wielder of power so potent it rattled her ribcage and made her skin crawl. Surprised as she is, she drifts into his path, hovering above the gravel walkway that he races down as if the hounds of hell are at his heels.

“Get out of my way,” he growls, barely halting in time.

His fangs flash in the moonlight, but it is the anger and terror in his dark eyes that catch her attention instead.

“Not a chance,” she says archly, hiding her curiosity behind authority. Raven never used to like that particular habit of hers, yelled at her about it quite frequently. Except her friend was dead–all of her friends were long dead. Nobody was around to care about Clarke’s words, not anymore, so she used them how she pleased. “You’re in my way, actually.”

He grimaces, hands fisting at his sides. “You have a whole graveyard to haunt.”

“I do.”

“Then go somewhere else.” His jaw clenches when the sound of agitated voices sound from behind him.

“Friends of yours?” She inquires, stalling.

He just tries to dart around her, but she sways into his path, blocking him as she very well knows he can’t step off the path. Vampires can’t walk on hallowed ground.

The voices draw closer, a cluster of frantic, almost angry shouts. With a snarl, the dark-haired boy starts forward, and Clarke doesn’t bother to move this time, because, well, she is a ghost. Things pass right through her just as easily as time slips by her–without notice, without feeling.

Shock courses through her instead when they collide, as solid as the ground beneath their feet. They both huff in surprise, and then there is a strange pressure on her upper arms.

 _Hands_ , she thinks in a racing daze. _His hands._

Despite the swears pouring from his lips–lips that are stained with dried blood–his hands are steadying, firm, trustworthy.

Then they are gone, and a shiver wracks through her, watching him run down the path, without even a glance backwards.

He runs as if nothing happened, and Clarke stays in place, her bloodied feet motionless for once, because for the first time in over five hundred years, she has felt something more than her guilt.

* * *

**_ii. this boy builds coffins_ **

She wasn’t warm.

It is all he can think about in the following days. He should be thinking about being recognized. He should be thinking about watching out for Roma’s friends. He should be thinking about what a fucking idiot he was for believing that he could handle anything that even came close to a relationship with a human. He should be thinking about the way he barely left Roma with enough blood to live before his better senses kicked in.

Instead, Bellamy thinks about the girl in the tattered white dress, and how her skin didn’t feel like an inferno when he brushed his palms against it.

Human heat is so foreign, even irritating to him. His sister likes the sensation, the feel of the living against her deadness, which is more than he ever needed to know about Octavia and skin-to-skin contact.

“It’s comforting,” she had explained once, tongue flicking over her fangs like she just got them yesterday, instead of two hundred years ago. “It reminds me of how it used to be.”

Sometimes he forgets that she isn’t alive anymore, because there is a vitality to his sister that the bite couldn’t smother out. The rage she had flown into when she discovered he had chosen to be turned too– _my sister, my responsibility_ , even if that meant a life of bloody, uncontrollable urges–had surprised even Lincoln. Newborns were strong, but even her sire’s millennia-old strength had been barely enough to restrain Octavia. Life didn’t leave her simply because she let in death too.

Now only the sadness that flashes in her eyes when he loses control on occasion–very rare occasion, because Bellamy doesn’t need to feel like a monster even though he is one–reminds him of what she has really become, what they both have become.

 _I am become death._  Ironic, because as dead as he is, blood still dictates his very existence.

Maybe that is why he can’t forget the ghost girl, saturated in dried and dripping rust-red as she was. His palms tingle, though, reminding him of the real reason. She wasn’t warm, and he missed that lack of heat.

The tingle turns to an itch, digging under his skin like needles, poking and prodding until the stars wink awake and his feet start moving towards the graveyard. The moment he lays eyes on the flash of white circling the stones, his restlessness settles. For days he goes back, lingering outside the iron gates, watching her pace, and circle, an animated thing among so much silence and stillness.

It isn’t long before he puts himself in her path again. He never was very good at self-control.

“You,” she breathes, and a whining breeze swirls around them.

“Me,” he rasps, barely audible over the rattling of the bare tree limbs that criss-cross likes scars against the dark sky above them.

Then she does the unexpected, reaching out to press a hand directly over his unbeating heart. The contact is tepid, almost cool, and he chokes up, because for once, he doesn’t feel consumed, by flame or by bloodlust.

“How can we–” She trails off, as if not even really knowing her own question.

The wonder and yearning in her voice astounds him, making it hard to speak. “We’re made of the same stuff. I am become death–”

“Destroyer of worlds,” she finishes with a bitter smile.

“Oppenheimer. The father of the–”

“I know who Oppenheimer is.” Her silver eyes flicker with exasperation. “I met him, actually.”

“Really?”

“Jealous?”

“Yes, actually.”

Her laugh is deeper than he would have expected, and sadder. It holds a buoyant sort of power though, and he can’t help but join in. Her fingers curl into his shirt, and she steps closer.

“Clarke,” she says, tipping her head up. “My name is Clarke.”

Then she kisses him, and her mouth is cool, but then her lips part, and so does his, and his hands clutch at her waist and her fingers slide up to twist into his hair. They are pressed together, line against line against line, because not even death could separate them now. Oh, then does heat build in Bellamy, but from the inside out, slowly, so very slowly, not like a wild, ravaging blaze but rather the soft warmth of a fire from a home’s hearth.

“Morning is coming soon,” she murmurs even as she lets her hands dance underneath the hem of his shirt.

“Not too soon,” he argues lightly, walking her backwards against the large tree at the center of the graveyard.

She smiles, and for a second, Bellamy swears her eyes flash blue. “Good.”

Words give way to kisses, even though the moon will give way to the sun eventually, and they will both have to disappear.

Yet, as Clarke rests her hand, cool and steady, over his heart again, certainty settles in him that they will meet again, and soon.

**Author's Note:**

> I just had to do a little spooky thing for Bellarke for Halloween :) Heavy inspiration from Florence's Howl, My Boy Builds Coffins, and Only If For A Night.
> 
> Come find me on tumblr (kay-emm-gee)!


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